The Queue: Blame Greg

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Mike Sacco will be your host today.

In the spirit of today's final question, I'm gonna blame Ghostcrawler for something completely unrelated to his job. Greg, buddy, I need to get paid more than once a month. Ikea doesn't shop itself.

Side note: Alex, what were you on when you made this image?

Spectres asked:

If the language (Troll) was changed to (Zandali) why wouldn't they change the language (Gutterspeak) to (Forsaken)? And for that matter, what reason could their have been to not let Worgen speak (Gilnean)?

Well, there's no real reason to change Gutterspeak to Forsaken. Gutterspeak is the name of the language (which, by the way, only exists for gameplay reasons). The Troll language is called Zandali, so changing it from "Troll" to "Zandali" made sense, at least. And Worgen would not speak Gilnean, because Gilneans speak Common, like pretty much all Humans.

nicko666 asked:

Is there any reason for the hour delay on auction house payments, or does it serve purely as way to slow us down?

I assume it's a mechanic to stem the amount of business the serious auction house players can do, but for everyone else, it seems a bit irritating.

This question was answered quite well by commenter eel5pe:

The delay is there to help combat gold sellers. One of the ways that gold sellers used to stealthily transfer funds was by having the buyer list items on the AH at prices way over value (which is why AH lurkers may have occasionally noticed grey items listed for thousands of gold), and then the gold seller would buy them. Blizzard got wise and implemented an hour delay in which whatever magic code they use to filter through the millions of auctions that happen every hour does its thang and sniffs out suspicious sales.

Aje asked:

As a Holy Paladin, it is absolutely essential that my offhand be a shield - or can i rock one of the other spellcasty offhands? (granted the B.I.S. items are shields, but let's just say i haven't progressed that far)

A PVE healer will find it completely unnecessary to use a shield if there's an off-hand with better stats available.

Fweet asked:

If I put another player on ignore, I can't see their text. (I can't recall at the moment if emotes are also blocked, or if mail from that player is deliverable.)

Is it possible to make the player's avatar turn invisible, too?

No.

Dinojake asked:

Will the Raid Finder allow characters to que up for raids that are below them in terms of level? Could I que up for a level 60 raid on a level 70 character, a 70 raid on an 80 character and so on?

No info on that functionality just yet.

Marius W asked:

Why is Ghostcrawler still head developer?
Wrath and Cata all had major mistakes that Blizzard has admitted to doing.
Cata is a bore as most people would tell you. Not all, but the majority has not been too thrilled with Cata.
He doesn't really stray much from what he has done in the past and most of the new stuff we get it are features "borrowed" from other MMO's.

Wouldnt it make more sense to get in some fresh blood to mix it up in WoW.
C'mon, we are fighting recycled bosses in Cata raids. We are doing recycled heroics.. 4 of them. Not 1 or 2. 4 of them are old dungeons that mainly had their scripts fine tuned.
The man is out of fresh ideas.

I barely know where to begin here. I'll just correct you on the most obvious one: Greg Street is lead systems designer, not lead producer or game director or lead designer or "head developer." He designs game systems like character classes and professions. If you have complaints with art direction, encounter design, overall game philosophy, or a myriad of other areas of the game, you'd probably be better off taking them up with the people who're actually in charge of them.Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!